Spam inspires musos to song

The Outside the Inbox compilation

Proving artists can take inspiration from the most unlikely of sources, a group of musicians has produced a compilation of songs inspired by and titled after the subject lines of spam messages.

The Outside the Inbox compilation features 14 tracks by a variety of musicians, in a variety of styles, ranging from the wistful country melodies of I Got Your Letter to the experimental, techno beat of Urgent Business Confidential.

The compilation is the brainchild of Brad Sucks, a one-man band from Ottawa, Canada, who explains "it started out as a novelty idea, but the results have far exceeded my expectations".

"Aside from the amusement of turning something as annoying as spam into art, I'm very happy to have the chance to showcase some of the great independent music happening on the Internet these days," Brad added.

If you like the tracks (and why not?) you can get Brad to burn you a copy of the 'concept album' onto a CD, which he'll mail to you anywhere in the world for $5.

There are some interesting (and tuneful) songs among the 14 featured but we can't help been slightly disappointed nobody did a cover of Monty Python's Spam song.

Maybe that wouldn't have fitted with the concept album approach but we still feel it's something of an omission not to have any reference to a song which inspired the application of the word spam to unsolicited commercial email in the fist place… ®